From Zero to Hero: Top ten self-made Billionaires

09 Aug 2017

Top ten self-made Billionaires

“Money is the sixth sense that makes it possible to enjoy the other five” – Richard Ney

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate a vision, passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion. There are two types of billionaires: those who inherited their wealth, and those who built it from nothing and become a billionaire from zero.

From over the past 30 years, it has been witnessed that the foundation of the wealth of the richest people has shifted away from old, inherited money. The self-made scores settled for the Forbes 400, shows that progressively they found self-made billionaires among the richest people in the world. The top ten self-made Billionaires are mentioned below:

Bill Gates, the richest man in the world for the 17th time, initiated programming computers when he was only 13 years old. He established Microsoft with childhood friend Paul Allen in 1975 and has become top self-made billionaire. Gates has guaranteed to give away at least half of his wealth to donations after his death. In the mid-2000s, he shifted most of his work towards the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which funds many charitable causes worldwide. He has a net worth of $75 Billion.

In 1975, Amancio Ortega cofounded Zara, a designer clothing store centred on a reasonable price model. His company, Inditex, is the largest fashion group on earth. Ortega coped to avoid the financial crisis in Spain by growing his wealth by $45 billion from 2009 to 2014 with the growth of the company and has a net worth of $67 Billion.

Warren Buffett exhibited financial expertise at a young age and bought his first stock investment at 11 years old. By 13 he had his own small business distributing newspapers. Now a chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, his company has the highest-priced stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, with Class A shares dealing at over $200,000 each. He has an estimated net worth of $60.8 Billion and is listed among the top self-made billionaire.

Carlos Slim Helu studied engineering at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) in Mexico before going on to found companies that have interest in the financial, industrial, telecommunications and media sectors, among others. Today, he controls more than 200 companies in Mexico and is one of the largest stockholders of The New York Times with a net worth of $50 Billion.

Jeff Bezos wrote Amazon’s original business plan in the passenger seat and there he planned to establish the company. After Amazon took off, Bezos created the human spaceflight company Blue Origins in 2000. Bezos individually owns 18% of Amazon’s shares, and the company is now disrupting the TV and film industry. He has an estimated net worth of $45.2 Billion and among the top self-made billionaires.

Mark Zuckerberg, a well-known and top self-made billionaire, started Facebook during his sophomore year at Harvard University, after which he shifted to California with his cofounders in order to develop the company’s growth. In 2006, he rejected an offer from Yahoo to attain the company for $1 billion, which was a smart move seeing that in 2012, Facebook’s IPO upturned $16 billion. He has a net worth of $44.6 Billion.

Larry Ellison went from programmer to entrepreneur in order to build his repute and luck and now is among the top self-made billionaires. He and two colleagues established Oracle, a social database management system used by the CIA. Ellison served as CEO until 2014 and is now the chairman and chief technology officer. He also has a immense real estate portfolio, which comprises most of a Hawaiian island and has an estimated net worth of $43.6 Billion.

The richest person in New York and top most self-made billionaire, Michael Bloomberg commenced his career at Salomon Brothers, where he joined as a trader and later became a partner. When the company was developed, he used his termination pay to cofound Bloomberg L.P. in 1981. Bloomberg has also served as the mayor of New York for three successive terms, and has been declared as a possible candidate for US presidency and has a net worth of $40 Billion.

Larry Page worked on the project named “BackRub” in 1996 with his roommate Brin while they were doctoral candidates in computer science at Stanford University. For more than a year, the elementary search engine functioned on the university’s servers before it took up too much bandwidth. The pair left Stanford to start the company that became Google and become the top self-made billionaire with a net worth of $35.2 Billion.

Sergey Brin travelled from Moscow to US with his parents when he was a child. Before meeting his Google cofounder Larry Page at Stanford University, Brin earned a degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Maryland. Today, he runs Google X, the semi-secret sector of Google dedicated to major technological innovation and has a net worth of $34.4 Billion.